The New York Comic Convention took place over the weekend. These occasions, and there are several throughout the year, are where the publishers announce their plans: new titles, new creators on old titles, signings of new talent, announcements about editorial direction, etc. As a fan, one does not necessarily attend these things (I'm not fond of fan-oriented conventions based on my limited experience to date) but one does follow them online to see what is new and exciting.
So what's new? Not much. What's exciting? Very little. Dullest convention so far for news that interests me, I'm afraid.
The one thing that caught my attention at all was the new creators on Fantastic Four after Mark Millar and Bryan Hitchens are done. Writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Dale Eaglesham will take over. I don't know anything at all about Hickman; I like Eaglesham, who's been doing handsome work for Justice Society of America, but I wouldn't have pictured him doing the sleek, futuristic FF. But I will certainly give this a chance.
UPDATE: Missed one. This article describing a panel discussion on the Venture Brothers animated program was also interesting. No new information, unfortunately. This is the only one of the gross-out cartoon shows that I like - can't watch South Park, unimpressed with the lifeless, illogical and derivative Family Guy, don't have much use for any of the others (although Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law was often fun). But Venture Brothers is a delight. For the uninitiated, an extremely strange satire on Jonny Quest, the Hardy Boys, Scooby-Doo and superheroes all at the same time. Much better than it sounds.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Remember the Maine! (Dry)
It was actually a bit later than the next day, but I did make the dry version of the Remember the Maine! I prefer it, I think. Here's the link to the recipe. (Both recipes, actually.) The aromatic version is a pretty jazzy Manhattan variation, but the dry version is quite distinctive. Of course, I like anything with kirschwasser in it.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Trouble in Legion-Land
The cover of Legion of Super-Heroes #50.
One of DC's most beloved and long-running Silver Age series was the Legion of Super-Heroes. They began as occasional supporting characters in Superboy, Supergirl, Adventure Comics, Action Comics and occasionally Superman and Jimmy Olsen stories back in 1958, so they just passed the 50 year mark. Long time for a bunch of teenage superheroes from a thousand years in the future.
Well, the 50 year celebration was noted somewhat by DC, which had quite a few appearances and references to the characters in last year's books, has been republishing some of the better uncollected stuff from the 1980s, when the title was very hot, and produced a special 50th anniversary collection. There has also been a retrospective volume of essays titled Teenagers From the Future, which I recommend and will perhaps review here when I've finished it. But all is not well in published Legion-land, so to speak.
The Legion is notable in a lot of ways. It has one of the earliest and most numerous organized fan bases in the comics field - they started publishing a fanzine back in the early 1970s, long before the Internet made such efforts easy. The place to go for news and discussion now, by the way, is Legion World. It has a long and convoluted publishing history, and several major changes in emphasis that eventually resulted in actual rewrites of continuity, so-called reboots.
After their stint as guest stars, the Legion took over Adventure Comics in the 1960s for a long and acclaimed run. Pushed out by Supergirl strips, they moved to a backup strip in Action Comics, and then limped into backup strips in Superboy, an almost moribund title partly relying on reprints in the early 70s. But then they took over Superboy, which became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and then simply Legion of Super-Heroes by the late 1970s.
In the 1980s, the strip became hot, one of DC's most popular properties, while written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Keith Giffen. A new Legion of Super-Heroes title was begun with much fanfare and a new issue 1. This was actually volume three; there had been a brief reprint title in the early 1970s with the name. Volume three lasted until the end of the decade and the departure of Levitz when he became a full-time editor at DC.
And that's when things began to go wrong, many fans felt, for the Legion. The title was handed over to Giffen, who was also a writer, together with long-time fans Tom and Mary Bierbaum. They were permitted to restart the series with a volume four, but they began by explaining that five years had passed since the old series. The United Planets were in disarray, the Legion had dissolved, and the old utopia had become a dystopia. The story had a much more adult tone, and is still admired for its refusal to pander to the reader - you had to read carefully to keep up, and the story was sophisticated and elaborately based in the long continuity of the Legion. It was, to put it mildly, not a welcoming experience for new readers. The Legion's huge cast and long continuity had been pushing people away for years, of course.
There were other problems. The editorial decision that Superman had never been Superboy after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot of the entire DC universe had crippled the Legion, as the writers struggled to keep straight a continuity in which they could no longer refer to the most prominent character in the Legion for most of its history. After some very strange and unpopular decisions in v4 (blowing up the moon and then Earth, introducing young clones of the old Silver Age Legion, having a small group of Legionnaires adopt new identities and go rogue), DC gave up and decided to reboot the Legion franchise.
They kept the old numbering in the two ongoing series, which didn't help, but the fresh start was promising. At first it appeared that the writers were simply retelling the old history of the Legion with an updated sensibility and without Superboy; that was what I preferred. But over time it became clear that this was actually a different Legion and a new continuity. It bothered many readers that we would apparently never see the old original Legion again, but the new one was good for a while. However, many old fans didn't appreciate this new, bright and shiny Legion. They missed the complex characters and relationships and didn't enjoy callow teenagers in another utopia. Most fans called this version simply the Reboot Legion, but critics often called it the Archie Legion, or the Kiddie Legion. It probably didn't help that primary artist Jeffrey Moy had a relatively cartoony style compared to Keith Giffen or Steve Lightle's art.
Now Legion fandom began to separate into camps. There were the old grognards for whom the Adventure Legion of the 60s was best; a larger group preferred the recent Levitz Legion from the 70s and 80s; a smaller but vocal crowd preached the virtues of the Giffen dystopia, which most referred to simply as Volume Four or v4, despite the fact that v4 was actually still continuing; a new group preferred the new Reboot Legion. Some, like myself, appreciated each for its individual qualities, but it was all rather hard to take.
The Reboot Legion last for about ten years with declining circulation and many changes of direction and emphasis. They nearly lost me when they brought aboard writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning who went back in the dystopia direction; I really didn't appreciate artist Olivier Coipel. But of course there was yet another group of fans who liked the "DnA" Legion.
When it came to an end, to everyone's surprise, they rebooted again. The v5 Legion of Super-Heroes title (there had been some other intermediate titles, but none with the full LSH name) came to be known as the Threeboot, or the WaK Legion for the creators, writer Mark Waid and Barry Kitson. Waid started over without fuss or apologies, and leaped into mid story with Legionnaires who were about in the 18-20 range that had been popular for most of the run. Waid had effectively "reimagined" the Legion, carefully sorting out their identities and characteristics, changing some origins and appearances, and adding the notion that the young Legion were in a rebellious cold war with the stuffy adults.
I loved it; Legion fandom was not nearly so impressed. Many wondered what happened to the Reboot Legion, or wearily stumped for the return of the now long-lost original Legion, or simply didn't like the youthful rebellious bit (I thought that was hilarious - no one seemed to appreciate the fact that they didn't like it because they're old farts themselves!) And Waid and Kitson began to run out of steam after about a year. Supergirl was brought in and the book retitled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Finally Waid and Kitson left the book in the hands of Tony Bedard.
About a year and a half ago, there was much excitement when old writer Jim Shooter, who had written two acclaimed runs of the Legion in Adventure and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, returned to write the Threeboot for a 16 issue run, retitled simply LSH after Supergirl went back to the 20th century. This made a lot of old fans happy - Shooter is a good craftsman as a writer, and the stories became more dense with characterization and incident, and the personalities of the Legion closer to their original formats.
It recently, however, was announced that the Legion of Super-Heroes v5 would end with issue 50, and Shooter's 16 issue plot was going to lose four issues. While all this was happening, popular writer Geoff Johns had, to universal astonishment and some delight, revived what appeared for all the world to be the original Legion from before the "five year gap" that had started all the trouble. The old editorial edict that there was never a Superboy has now been lifted, and the old Legion began to appear as time travelers in Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, in a somewhat confusing tale called "The Lightning Saga."
Some fans are not certain that this isn't still another Legion in effect, since the later history of the original Legion apparently didn't happen as we saw it. Some call it the Lightning Saga Legion, or the Action Legion when they appeared in a well-received story with Superman in that title, or the Johns Legion. And the writing was pretty clearly on the wall for the now orphaned Threeboot.
Shooter got the shaft on his story. It has been obvious for some issues that the big climax was going to be a tight fit if all his story elements were going to be neatly tied up with a bow. That was what the solicitations promised, certainly.
But when the book arrived last Wednesday, shockwaves quickly rocked the fan community. Without warning, Shooter was off the book. The script was by "Justin Thyme". In other words, either Shooter quit or his script was rejected and replaced by an author who didn't care for his name to be attached. With justification: this is a dog's breakfast. Only the primary plot was addressed, hardly any loose ends were tied up, and both story and art were rushed and awful. I won't bother to discuss the actual events of the story, because I don't really want to think about it. I agree with a number of critics who now wish they'd simply stopped at 49 and left us hanging.
Rumors are flying, and I can't tell exactly what happened yet. Presumably Shooter will explain at some point. But there are a lot of angry fans, who were enjoying Shooter's take and feel cheated. That certainly describes me.
The only current Legion appearances are taking place in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, a beautifully drawn five-issue mini-series in which all three Legions appear in a big team up. There is vast unease about how it will all end up and what the future of the Legion holds. A new Adventure Comics is promised, but there is uncertainty about just how much Legion content there will be.
My prediction is that Geoff Johns and DC's editors have concluded that the Legion works best as an appendage to the Superman mythos, as it originally was. Or at least that this is the way to reintroduce a single, coherent LSH. So we will see them appearing as guest stars for a while, and then at some point, hopefully, they'll get their own title back. I'm not totally unhappy with the prospect, since I was pretty glad to see the old Legion again. But I do wish DC would make up their minds. And what they chose to do to finish the current title, the Threeboot, is not suggestive of the notion that they know what they are doing.
Footnotes?
The Cat Bastet, my so far mostly silent partner here, suggests that I may have to provide footnotes for my comic book reviews. Yeah, I was afraid of that. When I started writing these to an old friend in email, there was no need to explain references, because he is also a long-time comic book reader who largely shares my tastes: mostly old school superheroics. When I began to also send them to two more friends, I tended to go into more detail, because they didn't necessarily read the same things. Now, I may have to go into much more detail in order to be intelligible, it would appear.
CB particularly wanted to know why I found the Flash scene in Final Crisis touching. Briefly, DC has several generations of heroes, often with the same name. The great transition using Golden Age names and gimmicks in the Silver Age is the only major instance of success, but the three generations of the Flash, all existing in the same coherent continuity, would be the other major exception. That is to say, replacing the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen) with the Bronze Age Flash (Wally West) was actually successful, and Wally sustained his own series for most of twenty years while Barry was dead. Now Barry is back, and no one is sure where it's all going.
I'm not the biggest Flash fan, but I did read the Wally Flash while Mark Waid wrote the series in the 90s, and enjoyed it. He focused on that generational aspect, and that was why I found the scene moving.
Probably I need to write a post on character deaths and successions. It's been done, and better, no doubt, by other writers, but perhaps it will be appreciated by our audience.
CB particularly wanted to know why I found the Flash scene in Final Crisis touching. Briefly, DC has several generations of heroes, often with the same name. The great transition using Golden Age names and gimmicks in the Silver Age is the only major instance of success, but the three generations of the Flash, all existing in the same coherent continuity, would be the other major exception. That is to say, replacing the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen) with the Bronze Age Flash (Wally West) was actually successful, and Wally sustained his own series for most of twenty years while Barry was dead. Now Barry is back, and no one is sure where it's all going.
I'm not the biggest Flash fan, but I did read the Wally Flash while Mark Waid wrote the series in the 90s, and enjoyed it. He focused on that generational aspect, and that was why I found the scene moving.
Probably I need to write a post on character deaths and successions. It's been done, and better, no doubt, by other writers, but perhaps it will be appreciated by our audience.
Remember the Maine!
The wonderful Oh Gosh! cocktail blog describes the aromatic version of this drink at this link. I made it last night. Note that there is also a dry version of the drink, which I'll make tonight after a late class. I've had both once before, and definitely remembered Remember the Maine. It's essentially a modified Manhattan, of which, as I noted in an earlier post, there are many excellent variations.
Watchmen in the NY Times
This article in the Times describes, with a few details I hadn't seen elsewhere, the long process of bringing famed graphic novel Watchmen to the silver screen. I'm breaking my general rule of thumb here - I don't like to link to link to the generally execrable New York Times, full of malicious and wrong-headed nonsense. But they do still employ skilful writers, and this is an interesting article.
Comic Book Report - January
For some time now, I've been briefly reviewing weekly comic book purchases in email sent to friends, so I thought I'd transfer that to the blog. I have the difficulty, as mentioned in an earlier post, that the number of comics I am interested in reading is rapidly falling, and for some reason suddenly almost everything I buy is coming out at the end of the month. So these reports may become monthly and somewhat unwieldy. I think I will make very brief remarks and choose to review one or two books at more length each time I do this. Here we go:
Birds of Prey 126. This relatively long-running series about a variety of women adventurers loosely connected to the Batman storylines is about to be canceled - in fact, this is the penultimate issue. I've been buying it for some years, though not from the beginning, as long-time writer Gail Simone is a favorite. But her successors have not been quite as interesting, so if this weren't ending, I'd probably be dropping it. This issue is mostly about the travails of Oracle's opposite number, the Calculator, computer guy to the supervillains. It's not too bad, and sets up the final confrontation between the ladies and the bad guys. I can't really recommend it to anyone but long-time readers, under the circumstances.
Captain America 46. On the other hand, this was satisfying on every level. Art, script, cover, and the ongoing plot are all terrific. Indeed, it gets hard to say much about this series other than "buy it!" every month. This time around, the new Captain America, "Bucky" Barnes, is off to rescue an old ally, the android Human Torch from the clutches of an old enemy, while in company with another old ally, the Sub-Mariner. For this first blog review, I'll reiterate my principal observation about this book: I can't believe they killed Steve Rogers, the original Captain America (in issue 25) and yet this is a terrific story. Brubaker manages to do super-heroics and spy adventures with a noir feel all at once. Highly recommended.
Captain Britain and MI 13 9. This is another oddity: super-heroics merged with horror and fantasy; and like CA, successful. MI 13 is a British intelligence agency designed to cope with the supernatural, and our look at it has been delightful fun so far. This issue wraps up the current storyline, which included Captain Britain's nameless new team, with lots of interesting little twists, surprises and bits of characterization. I like the casual use of Dr. Strange story elements without having to bring the doctor himself into the action, and I'm looking forward to more of this. Highly recommended.
Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil 1. This is one of the Marvel all-ages books, but they've dropped the Marvel Adventures branding usually present. Wise, no doubt - the regular issues don't sell, as most collectors seem to regard them as strictly for children. The reputation is unfair - some of this is not only pretty good but refreshingly free of the doom and gloom so prevalent in many current Marvel titles. These stories exist in a mostly continuity-free zone where classic versions of the standard Marvel characters have adventures, almost always in one-off issues instead of the usual multi-issue storyline. In other words, they're well written, fairly well drawn, accessible and entertaining - all the things that many more popular comics are not. I don't read them all, but I buy them off and on when they look particularly interesting. This issue focuses on the villains, recruited by Dr. Doom to steal something from Tony Stark (Iron Man) and who have trouble with Dr. Strange, presented here as a competent foe, not Brian Bendis' troubled bozo. Anyway, this is the first all-ages issue, other than X-Men: First Class, (which I buy in trade paperback collections) with an overall thrust. Doom is up to something, and clearly we'll find out what in future issues. Mildly recommended.
Fantastic Four 563. Marvel's venerable flagship title, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!", is presently being done for a lively spell by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitchens. I've been enjoying it much more than most of the Internet critics, it appears. The art is simply gorgeous, and I like Millar's willingness to go gonzo in this title and not simply give us "Dr. Doom tries to conquer the world" then "the Frightful Four attack the Baxter Building" then "Sue and Reed break up" and "Ben is angry and leaves the team", wash, rinse, repeat. I am troubled by the strange notion that Dr. Doom had mentors in evil; I would hardly think he would admit it. Doom famously has an out-sized ego, even for a comic book super-villain. But I'll go with it, as so far this run has been lavishly entertaining. Highly recommended.
Final Crisis 6 and 7 of 7. This the cap of DC's latest big crossover event. Written by Grant Morrison, this has been... well, confusing would be a good description. Morrison has written some of the best comics of the last ten years (All-Star Superman, New X-Men, JLA). But he has also written some wildly complex stories that seem to suffer from having too many ideas crammed in all at once. Final Crisis has been one of the latter. Now that it's done, it appears to be a giant reset button to enable DC editorial to clean up their increasingly murky continuity. I wouldn't venture to suggest that it worked, but if it was something of a train wreck, it was also worth watching. There have been some memorable scenes, and these last two issues include several:
* Superman arch-foe Lex Luthor and Captain Marvel arch-foe Dr. Sivana, forced to work for the big bad guy Darkseid, have not been at all enthused about it, and their interactions are surprisingly entertaining. Who would have thought Sivana would be so amusing? "Impress me, Sivana." Oh dear.
* All three of the Flashes, Golden Age Jay Garrick, Silver Age Barry Allen (long thought dead) and Bronze Age Wally West, gathered together with a problem. Solution? Outrun it, of course. Wally: "Barry, I think I met this guy before when he was called the Black Flash. I outran him." In the next panel, we see only Barry's slight smile and Jay's avuncular look of appreciation. Barry: "Heh. I bet you did." Little bit of a lump in the throat moment there.
* And then there's the confrontation between Batman and the big bad, Darkseid, who can naturally squash him like a bug. It doesn't exactly go that way. Wonderful scene.
A lot of what happens in these last two issues is difficult to sort out. DC keeps arranging these big events and claiming that they've made a fresh continuity start, but then nothing much changes. Editorial confusion, I think. But the new status quo would appear to suggest that everyone thinks Batman is dead, Hawkman and Hawkwoman appear to be dead... yet again. They're reincarnators from Ancient Egypt, of course, so I assume this is just another reboot. Aside from that, Superman saves the day in an interesting fashion, but again Morrison seems to have had about three ideas for how the climax works and chosen to use them all. I wouldn't think it was necessary to have all the Green Lanterns come to the rescue; and an army of alternate dimensional Supermen get recruited to come to the rescue; and for Superman to do two apparently inconsistent things at once to beat Darkseid. Furthermore, another big bad guy shows up at the end behind it all. Doesn't that diminish the role of Darkseid? Too many big ideas, not enough editorial discipline, I says. But it makes for fun reading, on the whole. Mildly recommended.
Incredible Hercules 125. This might be the weirdest thing being published right now. It was the Incredible Hulk until about a year ago, then mythic hero Hercules, who's never sustained his own series, took over, complete with sidekick, the brilliant youth Amadeus Cho. No part of this should interest me at all - I don't much care for the Hulk, Hercules was always an entertaining guest star in my opinion, at best, and Amadeus Cho? Really? But no, this stuff is brilliant, probably one of the two or three best things being published at the moment. Greek mythology is cleverly blended into Marvel continuity for a pleasureable reading experience every month. The current storyline wraps this issue, mostly taken up with a momentary alternate reality in which the women of the Marvel universe have taken over the world because of a magical artifact that Herc and Amadeus and Herc's current girlfriend Namora almost kept out of the bad gal's hands but not quite. Very highly recommended, and probably the best issue this month.
Knights of the Dinner Table 147. This is, for the uninitiated, a crudely drawn but hilariously scripted long-running storyline about five friends and their Hackmaster game (read D&D, obviously). There really is a Hackmaster game, along with various other gaming products produced by the publisher, Kenzer and Company. This issue, as usual, is splendid, with the players momentarily enjoying a respite in their current adventure, and a secondary gaming group having a raucous time playtesting a "Cattlepunk" scenario. Highly recommended.
Legion of Super-Heroes 50. The last issue, and this is the one that's going to get the full treatment, so I'll save it for a later post. Not going to be a good review, though.
Marvels: Eye of the Camera 2 and 3 of 6. Almost a decade and a half ago, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross produced an exciting retrospective of the modern Marvel super-heroic age through the eyes of Daily Bugle photographer Phil Sheldon, called simply Marvels. It was a huge hit at the time, and made the reputations of both creators. Here, Busiek teams with artist Jay Anacleto to show some more of Sheldon's life, interspersed with events happening in the background from Marvel comics of the 70s. Busiek has done this before, in his own Astro City series, showing how superheroics would look to ordinary people to great effect. This is much the same. Not as impactful as those gorgeous Marvels issues - that street level scene of Giant-Man striding over buildings during an early Avengers battle as seen by Sheldon is perhaps the most memorable image of superhero comics in the 90s. At any rate, mildly recommended.
Mighty Avengers 21. The Avengers was always a favorite at Marvel for me. With rare exceptions, it was one of the most satisfyingly consistent titles for many decades. When Geoff Johns and then Brian Bendis took over a few years ago, however, they lost me. Mighty Avengers was an attempt by Bendis to satisfy the old school readers like me who didn't care for his New Avengers, but it was at best a cosmetic improvement, and that only for the first few issues. However, Dan Slott, himself apparently a more old-school writer, has now taken over this version of the Avengers (in addition to New Avengers, Bendis now writes Dark Avengers, in which all the classic heroes are replaced by evil counterparts - it gets worse and worse). While impressed with Slott, who wrote vastly entertaining sequences of The Thing and She-Hulk (of all things) a few years ago, I have not been thrilled with his more recent, more mainstream Marvel stuff. Nor were the reviews of this new endeavor very good. But I gave it a try. I think I'll save more extensive remarks for when this story arc has concluded, assuming I stick with it, but this is interesting. Mildly recommended.
Uncanny X-Men Annual 2. I'm not a huge X-Men fan, and I would have skipped this if I'd seen it on the stands for the first time, with its tiresome porn star expression and pose of the character principally featured, Emma Frost, better known as the White Queen. But I'd seen reviews, and the writer, Matt Fraction, is not to be entirely ignored, so I gave it a try. Speaking of pornography, X-Men has resembled what one might term "continuity porn" since the days of its great renaissance in the 70s and early 80s when written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Dave Cockrum and John Byrne. This is no exception - it is mostly a flashback to a hitherto unsuspected affair between the White Queen, originally a villainess from the kinky Hellfire Club, and Namor, the Sub-Mariner. They recently featured in a meeting among some of Marvel's villains and anti-heroes, which some Internet wags are referring to as the "Illumi-naughty", and here we get the backstory. Well, I'm not much interested in the "Dark Reign" proposed in the other book, but this tale of Emma and Namor is really quite entertaining. Although I'm amused at the fact that Emma, who waltzes around in a white dominatrix outfit and Namor, who wears bathing trunks - if that - pass for fully rounded characters. Ah well.
Birds of Prey 126. This relatively long-running series about a variety of women adventurers loosely connected to the Batman storylines is about to be canceled - in fact, this is the penultimate issue. I've been buying it for some years, though not from the beginning, as long-time writer Gail Simone is a favorite. But her successors have not been quite as interesting, so if this weren't ending, I'd probably be dropping it. This issue is mostly about the travails of Oracle's opposite number, the Calculator, computer guy to the supervillains. It's not too bad, and sets up the final confrontation between the ladies and the bad guys. I can't really recommend it to anyone but long-time readers, under the circumstances.
Captain America 46. On the other hand, this was satisfying on every level. Art, script, cover, and the ongoing plot are all terrific. Indeed, it gets hard to say much about this series other than "buy it!" every month. This time around, the new Captain America, "Bucky" Barnes, is off to rescue an old ally, the android Human Torch from the clutches of an old enemy, while in company with another old ally, the Sub-Mariner. For this first blog review, I'll reiterate my principal observation about this book: I can't believe they killed Steve Rogers, the original Captain America (in issue 25) and yet this is a terrific story. Brubaker manages to do super-heroics and spy adventures with a noir feel all at once. Highly recommended.
Captain Britain and MI 13 9. This is another oddity: super-heroics merged with horror and fantasy; and like CA, successful. MI 13 is a British intelligence agency designed to cope with the supernatural, and our look at it has been delightful fun so far. This issue wraps up the current storyline, which included Captain Britain's nameless new team, with lots of interesting little twists, surprises and bits of characterization. I like the casual use of Dr. Strange story elements without having to bring the doctor himself into the action, and I'm looking forward to more of this. Highly recommended.
Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil 1. This is one of the Marvel all-ages books, but they've dropped the Marvel Adventures branding usually present. Wise, no doubt - the regular issues don't sell, as most collectors seem to regard them as strictly for children. The reputation is unfair - some of this is not only pretty good but refreshingly free of the doom and gloom so prevalent in many current Marvel titles. These stories exist in a mostly continuity-free zone where classic versions of the standard Marvel characters have adventures, almost always in one-off issues instead of the usual multi-issue storyline. In other words, they're well written, fairly well drawn, accessible and entertaining - all the things that many more popular comics are not. I don't read them all, but I buy them off and on when they look particularly interesting. This issue focuses on the villains, recruited by Dr. Doom to steal something from Tony Stark (Iron Man) and who have trouble with Dr. Strange, presented here as a competent foe, not Brian Bendis' troubled bozo. Anyway, this is the first all-ages issue, other than X-Men: First Class, (which I buy in trade paperback collections) with an overall thrust. Doom is up to something, and clearly we'll find out what in future issues. Mildly recommended.
Fantastic Four 563. Marvel's venerable flagship title, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!", is presently being done for a lively spell by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitchens. I've been enjoying it much more than most of the Internet critics, it appears. The art is simply gorgeous, and I like Millar's willingness to go gonzo in this title and not simply give us "Dr. Doom tries to conquer the world" then "the Frightful Four attack the Baxter Building" then "Sue and Reed break up" and "Ben is angry and leaves the team", wash, rinse, repeat. I am troubled by the strange notion that Dr. Doom had mentors in evil; I would hardly think he would admit it. Doom famously has an out-sized ego, even for a comic book super-villain. But I'll go with it, as so far this run has been lavishly entertaining. Highly recommended.
Final Crisis 6 and 7 of 7. This the cap of DC's latest big crossover event. Written by Grant Morrison, this has been... well, confusing would be a good description. Morrison has written some of the best comics of the last ten years (All-Star Superman, New X-Men, JLA). But he has also written some wildly complex stories that seem to suffer from having too many ideas crammed in all at once. Final Crisis has been one of the latter. Now that it's done, it appears to be a giant reset button to enable DC editorial to clean up their increasingly murky continuity. I wouldn't venture to suggest that it worked, but if it was something of a train wreck, it was also worth watching. There have been some memorable scenes, and these last two issues include several:
* Superman arch-foe Lex Luthor and Captain Marvel arch-foe Dr. Sivana, forced to work for the big bad guy Darkseid, have not been at all enthused about it, and their interactions are surprisingly entertaining. Who would have thought Sivana would be so amusing? "Impress me, Sivana." Oh dear.
* All three of the Flashes, Golden Age Jay Garrick, Silver Age Barry Allen (long thought dead) and Bronze Age Wally West, gathered together with a problem. Solution? Outrun it, of course. Wally: "Barry, I think I met this guy before when he was called the Black Flash. I outran him." In the next panel, we see only Barry's slight smile and Jay's avuncular look of appreciation. Barry: "Heh. I bet you did." Little bit of a lump in the throat moment there.
* And then there's the confrontation between Batman and the big bad, Darkseid, who can naturally squash him like a bug. It doesn't exactly go that way. Wonderful scene.
A lot of what happens in these last two issues is difficult to sort out. DC keeps arranging these big events and claiming that they've made a fresh continuity start, but then nothing much changes. Editorial confusion, I think. But the new status quo would appear to suggest that everyone thinks Batman is dead, Hawkman and Hawkwoman appear to be dead... yet again. They're reincarnators from Ancient Egypt, of course, so I assume this is just another reboot. Aside from that, Superman saves the day in an interesting fashion, but again Morrison seems to have had about three ideas for how the climax works and chosen to use them all. I wouldn't think it was necessary to have all the Green Lanterns come to the rescue; and an army of alternate dimensional Supermen get recruited to come to the rescue; and for Superman to do two apparently inconsistent things at once to beat Darkseid. Furthermore, another big bad guy shows up at the end behind it all. Doesn't that diminish the role of Darkseid? Too many big ideas, not enough editorial discipline, I says. But it makes for fun reading, on the whole. Mildly recommended.
Incredible Hercules 125. This might be the weirdest thing being published right now. It was the Incredible Hulk until about a year ago, then mythic hero Hercules, who's never sustained his own series, took over, complete with sidekick, the brilliant youth Amadeus Cho. No part of this should interest me at all - I don't much care for the Hulk, Hercules was always an entertaining guest star in my opinion, at best, and Amadeus Cho? Really? But no, this stuff is brilliant, probably one of the two or three best things being published at the moment. Greek mythology is cleverly blended into Marvel continuity for a pleasureable reading experience every month. The current storyline wraps this issue, mostly taken up with a momentary alternate reality in which the women of the Marvel universe have taken over the world because of a magical artifact that Herc and Amadeus and Herc's current girlfriend Namora almost kept out of the bad gal's hands but not quite. Very highly recommended, and probably the best issue this month.
Knights of the Dinner Table 147. This is, for the uninitiated, a crudely drawn but hilariously scripted long-running storyline about five friends and their Hackmaster game (read D&D, obviously). There really is a Hackmaster game, along with various other gaming products produced by the publisher, Kenzer and Company. This issue, as usual, is splendid, with the players momentarily enjoying a respite in their current adventure, and a secondary gaming group having a raucous time playtesting a "Cattlepunk" scenario. Highly recommended.
Legion of Super-Heroes 50. The last issue, and this is the one that's going to get the full treatment, so I'll save it for a later post. Not going to be a good review, though.
Marvels: Eye of the Camera 2 and 3 of 6. Almost a decade and a half ago, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross produced an exciting retrospective of the modern Marvel super-heroic age through the eyes of Daily Bugle photographer Phil Sheldon, called simply Marvels. It was a huge hit at the time, and made the reputations of both creators. Here, Busiek teams with artist Jay Anacleto to show some more of Sheldon's life, interspersed with events happening in the background from Marvel comics of the 70s. Busiek has done this before, in his own Astro City series, showing how superheroics would look to ordinary people to great effect. This is much the same. Not as impactful as those gorgeous Marvels issues - that street level scene of Giant-Man striding over buildings during an early Avengers battle as seen by Sheldon is perhaps the most memorable image of superhero comics in the 90s. At any rate, mildly recommended.
Mighty Avengers 21. The Avengers was always a favorite at Marvel for me. With rare exceptions, it was one of the most satisfyingly consistent titles for many decades. When Geoff Johns and then Brian Bendis took over a few years ago, however, they lost me. Mighty Avengers was an attempt by Bendis to satisfy the old school readers like me who didn't care for his New Avengers, but it was at best a cosmetic improvement, and that only for the first few issues. However, Dan Slott, himself apparently a more old-school writer, has now taken over this version of the Avengers (in addition to New Avengers, Bendis now writes Dark Avengers, in which all the classic heroes are replaced by evil counterparts - it gets worse and worse). While impressed with Slott, who wrote vastly entertaining sequences of The Thing and She-Hulk (of all things) a few years ago, I have not been thrilled with his more recent, more mainstream Marvel stuff. Nor were the reviews of this new endeavor very good. But I gave it a try. I think I'll save more extensive remarks for when this story arc has concluded, assuming I stick with it, but this is interesting. Mildly recommended.
Uncanny X-Men Annual 2. I'm not a huge X-Men fan, and I would have skipped this if I'd seen it on the stands for the first time, with its tiresome porn star expression and pose of the character principally featured, Emma Frost, better known as the White Queen. But I'd seen reviews, and the writer, Matt Fraction, is not to be entirely ignored, so I gave it a try. Speaking of pornography, X-Men has resembled what one might term "continuity porn" since the days of its great renaissance in the 70s and early 80s when written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Dave Cockrum and John Byrne. This is no exception - it is mostly a flashback to a hitherto unsuspected affair between the White Queen, originally a villainess from the kinky Hellfire Club, and Namor, the Sub-Mariner. They recently featured in a meeting among some of Marvel's villains and anti-heroes, which some Internet wags are referring to as the "Illumi-naughty", and here we get the backstory. Well, I'm not much interested in the "Dark Reign" proposed in the other book, but this tale of Emma and Namor is really quite entertaining. Although I'm amused at the fact that Emma, who waltzes around in a white dominatrix outfit and Namor, who wears bathing trunks - if that - pass for fully rounded characters. Ah well.
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